


The Curse of Kalabra

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e07 Identity, Fairy Tales, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"With the walls crumbling, the Kalabrans killed themselves to protect their greatest secret, the resting place of the Box of Orden." ~written in ancient runes upon a scroll found in the ruins of Kalabra and read by the Seeker of Truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Curse of Kalabra

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** non-graphic violence and character death; mass suicide

Kalabra was once a great city. It flourished when Aydindril was a mere village, when the D'Haran Empire was not even on the map. Its opulence and decadence were envied throughout the Midlands.  
  
There were many priceless jewels in the royal vault of Kalabra. But it was rumored the Kalabrans possessed a treasure far more rare than the most precious gems.  
  
A Box of Orden.  
  
In later years it came to be known that there were three Boxes of Orden, designed to be used together, but the Kalabrans knew only that their Box was precious. Great wizards and historians alike confirmed its power.  
  
In those days Kalabra was the most powerful of the kingdoms of the Midlands, but Tamarang was a close second.  
  
The crown prince of Tamarang, a handsome youth called Torvald, had already led armies against several smaller kingdoms by the time he reached manhood. Torvald was ambitious, and had yet to suffer a defeat in battle.  
  
Furthermore his hair was of so pure a gold that people said he was marked by the sun, and so the Creator must have blessed all his endeavors.  
  
It so happened that Tamarang too had a Box of Orden.  
  
Torvald knew of its mighty powers, and at first experimented with it in an attempt to access the magic locked within it that he sensed with his own Han.  
  
It was said that a Box of Orden could grant its possessor his every desire.  
  
But no matter what Torvald did, the Box wouldn't open.  
  
It was only when he met the Confessor Amelie at a formal celebration in Tamarang and began courting her that Torvard learned that the Boxes of Orden did _not_ open.  
  
He also learned from Amelie that there were three Boxes, and that whoever put them together would become the Master of All.  
  
Instantly Torvald knew he had to find the other two Boxes.  
  
Amelie did not share his desire for power, but she too wanted him to become the Master of Orden. Legend had it that Orden would protect its wielder from Confession, and although this was a source of some anxiety in Aydindril Amelie was convinced that Torvald would be a worthy Master of Orden.  
  
And then they could be together without her powers destroying his soul.  
  
So Torvald gathered his armies once again, and marched upon Kalabra with his Confessor at his side.  
  
But Kalabra refused to yield.  
  
The siege went on for many months. Torvald knew the Kalabrans couldn't maintain their defenses forever.  
  
Amelie feared that the Kalabrans were starving inside their sturdy city walls, and she prayed nightly to the Creator that the rulers of Kalabra would heed their people's misery and surrender the Box of Orden to Torvald.  
  
But Kalabra did not yield.  
  
Inside the walls its greatest wizards gathered. They would not give Prince Torvald of Tamarang the Box, nor would they permit him to find it. They would destroy the city first.  
  
But Torvald traveled with a Confessor. The Kalabran Council members knew that there was no fighting a Confessor's power. Any survivor could be forced to reveal their secret.  
  
So, on the night before Torvald's armies at last breached the city walls, the Kalabrans gathered in the square. The Council gave each person a cup of poison. Man, woman, and child, they drank it.  
  
Torvald entered the city triumphant, only to find it full of corpses.  
  
As he sent his soldiers to search for the Box of Orden, there was a great earthquake. Wrought by the Kalabran wizards' power, the disaster had been delayed until after their deaths by powerful magic.  
  
Torvald raced to the palace at the center of the city, desperate to find the Box before Kalabra was obliterated. His hair shone in the sun, but dust from falling buildings soon rendered it dull.  
  
Words appeared on the steps of the palace, before the great square full of the dead bodies of the Kalabrans:  
  
 _A curse on all who dare enter here._  
  


* * *

  
  
Torvald and Amelie both survived the massive earthquake.  
  
Amelie had searched in vain for survivors whom she could confess, until finally she found her way free of the ruined city again.  
  
She wept with joy when she saw Torvald was alive. But as he made his way toward her, the last portion of Kalabran city wall still standing began to topple. As Amelie watched in horror, it fell upon Torvald, crushing him instantly.  
  
Storytellers have it that Amelie took her own life out of grief, but the sole surviving written record of those times is the inherited journal of the Mother Confessors, passed down through the centuries from Magda Searus to the present.  
  
In that book, the Mother Confessor writes of Amelie's execution for her violation of the vows every Confessor must take not to use her power against the innocent, or for her own gain.  
  
Tamarang mourned the loss of its prince, but Torvald's younger brother, later called Enric the Kind, inherited the throne in due course.  
  
And so a Box of Orden remained in the treasury of Tamarang, and as the centuries passed, the inhabitants of that city forgot all that Torvald had learned of its power.  
  
The Box of Orden in Kalabra remained buried under the ruins of the greatest city in the Midlands.  
  
As for the location of the third Box, neither Tamarang nor Aydindril ever discovered it.


End file.
